Tintin items to be auctioned in Paris

The collection at Sotheby’s will include 288 books, storyboards and drawings, and includes a number of items signed by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé himself. One of these in particular, a drawing from 1938 which was used on the front cover of a Belgian newspaper, is estimated to fetch between €430,000 and €480,000. It was this same newspaper supplement, Le Petit Vingtième, which saw Tintin make his debut in the 11th issue published in 1929.

Other items include a storyboarded page from the adventure The Castafiore Emerald, and a page from King Ottokar's Sceptrem, which is described by the auction house as a ‘cult book’. The former includes a written dedication to the novelist and screenwriter Francois Riviere, while the latter depicts bumbling detectives Thomson and Thompson travelling by boat to a seaplane.

A first for auction house Sotheby’s

This will be Sotheby’s first time entering the world of comics, which those in Paris on European river cruises can experience, although Christie’s held an auction last year which raised more than €4 million. The Christie "bande dessinee" auction (drawn strips), which is taking place on 14th March, will be offering a further 10 original Tintin drawings for sale. A €700,000 estimate has been given for one of the items, which is a large ink drawing originally designed for a French bookseller poster.

Both exhibitions are highly anticipated due to the amount of Hergé’s drawings, which have now been acquired as part of private collections and are unlikely to surface again. These two auctions will follow the record breaking single sale of a comic book which occurred in May last year, when a 1937 Tintin book was sold for €2.6 million by French auction house Artcurial.